Notes from a Coma

by Mike McCormack

  Outside, a big yellow sun hung in the sky. Leafy trees cast shadows over the car park. It was the type of summer’s evening you made plans for, swims and walks and quiet drinks. But there I was standing in the car park of a mental hospital with a lump in my throat and my boyfriend inside bludgeoned with sedatives. And all I could think about was what that doctor had said about him being in the best place. The thing was that the best place for him was worse than anything I could ever have imagined.

  * Truth is, the soul of man under womb-to-tomb surveillance has not revealed itself. Try as we might we have yet to raise the ghost out of the machine. Still fleet of foot and ever fading beyond whatever probes and spells we have to hand it has yet to be drawn out into the light where we might hear it give an account of itself. Mapping the cortical and subcortical regions of the brain, tagging the neural correlates—none of this has brought us any closer than a distant telemetry which refuses to arc across the meat to mental gulf …

  And that ghost and host might be integrated beyond the wildest complexities of quantum causality, cottered in some way beyond the crude ecumenics of mentalism and physicalism, forces the idea of considering the ghost to be one of those basic universal elements like space and time, fleeting and irreducible, unspeakable in any terms other than its own. Or that the ghost-in-itself might not just in practice but in principle also lie beyond all epistemic probing, fenced off by a self-reflexive short circuit; or that beyond semantic fuzziness it may be nothing of any substance at all—these are the boundaries within which we hope to grasp it.

  Our best hope is that one day the ghost might tire of the chase, take pity on our awkward fumblings and give itself up. One day we might round a corner and find it waiting for us with a look of amused sympathy on its face. What kept you? it might ask or more likely How exactly did you get this far? But of course there is every chance that, awkward to the last, anything it has to say for itself will probably be spoken of in a language which flies over our heads.

  ANTHONY O’MALLEY

  Of course it’s easy with hindsight to say we should have read the signs, the writing on the wall as he’d have put it himself. But if the writing on the wall said something about a mental breakdown before the age of twenty then it took keener eyes than mine to read it.

  I used to go over to him in the afternoon—I had it arranged with Sarah that she would do the evening shift. Those first few days visiting him were penance, not just for me but for him also. He spent most of his time sleeping and during those times he was awake he could remember nothing; his memory was gone. His doctor explained to me that this was not unusual in breakdowns of this type. There were therapies and exercises and medication and with time and rest he could hope to make a full recovery. It was a relief to hear that but I have to say I didn’t have much hope for him during those first few days. Seeing him in that ward, so clueless and bewildered, it was like meeting him again for the first time as an infant—an infant dropped into a twenty-year-old body. Back again in his own childhood but with no idea that it was his. Bit by bit though he did come back to himself and one afternoon when I went over he was pulling on his shirt getting ready to walk out for cigarettes.

  “Let’s walk together,” he said. “A walk would be good.”

  The shop was two hundred yards away, just beyond the roundabout. JJ looked pale in the sunlight, paler behind a pair of black shades. But I thought by the way he walked that something of his old self was returning to him. It was good to be out in the air as well, anything was better than wandering through those corridors. As we walked I was struck by the fact that this was the first time in years we had walked anywhere together. It’s the truth—once father and son reach a certain age they literally go their separate ways.

  “They’re pulling back on my medication,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “Seemingly I’m fit enough now to sleep on my own.”

  “That’s good news.”

  “They’re starting this evening, tonight will be my first night without pills.”

  “That’ll help the other thing … your memory. Is anything coming back?”

  “Bits and pieces. Let’s sit here for a while.”

  The bench was under a big sycamore in a shady part of the front lawn. It faced on to the main road off the car park, in full view of the roundabout.

  “I have this image of myself reading a book,” he began. “Or rather I’m reading the inside cover of a book. This same image over and over. This book belongs to JJ O’Malley, Cahir, Louisburgh, Co Mayo, Ireland, Europe, The Earth, The Milky Way System, The Universe, The World. That’s all I have …”*

  What else but a book, I thought. Books before everything.

  “Do you know what it means?”

  “Yes, I remember it clearly. When you went to school you were a bit younger than your classmates and when it came time for the class to make its first Holy Communion there was some talk of holding you back and having you make it the following year. I put the foot down; you were smart enough and good enough and I didn’t want you falling behind in anything or getting separated from your friends. After some talk Eileen Mangan—she was your teacher at the time—said it was fine by her. She agreed with me; you were smart enough and good enough, there was no reason why you should be kept behind. You were given this little catechism, The Light of Christ, and you put your name on the inside cover. That’s the book you’re on about.”

  JJ shook his head. “It means nothing to me.”

  “It meant everything to you at the time. It contained all the questions and answers you had to learn off in preparation for the big day. Who made the world … that was the first one.”

  “God made the world,” JJ replied automatically.

  “Yes, and who is God?”

  “God is Our Father in Heaven.”†

  “See, you remember more than you think. Those were the first two questions in the book and you had it all off. Every evening you’d sit on the couch and I’d examine you on it, question after question. Within a few days you had the whole thing memorised from front to back. It was the first real inkling I had of just how smart you really were—it was the first inkling Eileen Mangan had as well. She called me up a few days after you got the book and I could tell by her voice she was worried. So smart she said, the smartest child I’ve ever taught. But the questions you were coming out with! The topic of original sin—you couldn’t leave it alone. What exactly was Adam’s sin?—even then you weren’t buying that orchard-raiding story. How was the sin transferred down to us from Adam? Was it the sin itself or was it just the guilt that was transferred? Was it like vertical transmission of disease in livestock? Bar the Virgin was anyone else exempt from it? How could a merciful God allow this? What exactly was aggravated concupiscence? Day after day you harped on it, putting her to the pin of her collar till she was forced to go out and spend ten pounds on the big single-volume Catechism of the Catholic Church just so that she could stay ahead of you. He’s a gifted child, she said. There’s no doubt about that. But I wouldn’t care to have his ideas in my head. Not at six years old—or sixty either.”

  “And that was my book?”

  “That was your book.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Burned … probably. You’re a great burner of things.”

  “I remember, that I do remember. Aggravated concupiscence … what the hell is that?”

  I shrugged. “You’ll have to ask a smarter man than me.”

  “I’ll ask Sarah. I’ll make a note of it.”

  “Do that. Sarah might know right enough.”

  This was my part in his recovery, talking him back to himself. He’d get these flashes, these dreams and images, sometimes in his sleep or sometimes just walking about. He’d make a note of them and have them ready for me when I went over. I’d read through them and tell him what I knew about them. Of course if you ask me he might have been better off forgetting some of them completely. But they were his memories and I had no right keeping them from
him. So we’d sit on that bench under the tree and I’d tell him what I knew.

  I handed him back his notebook.

  “We have to back up a bit for this one. Around the time you got your catechism you found out you were adopted. You came home from school one day, your face red raw from crying. You dumped your bag and coat on the floor and told me that you’d had a fight in school. Someone had called you a name and told you I wasn’t your real dad and that your home wasn’t your real home. You were trying to be brave about it, your two fists balled up on your hips, biting your lip to stop crying. I put you up on my knee and tried to explain it to you. I told you how I had travelled halfway round the world to find you in that orphanage and how I had the pick of thousands of other little boys but that none were as nice or as special as you. And I told you also that some mothers weren’t able to look after their little boys; in fact, it was because they loved their little boys so much that they had decided to hand them over to these orphanages. That was as good as I could do for you that day. But of course it wasn’t enough. You sat on the couch that evening and no amount of coaxing would get you to move from it. No, you didn’t want to go and play with Owen, and no, you didn’t care what you had for dinner. You grew up before my eyes that evening, JJ. Something solemn entered your soul.”

  “It doesn’t explain the image of me lying in a room with a drip in my arm.”

  I drew a deep breath. “Some things are so awful, JJ, you can’t look them square in the face and some things make no sense no matter what angle you look at them from. And of course they happen in other people’s lives, never in your own.”

  “These are my memories, Anthony. I need them. I mightn’t want them but without them I’m nothing.”

  “I know … About two weeks after that you were lying in the children’s ward of the general hospital with this drip in your arm; I was down the hall sitting across the desk from a child psychologist who was telling me that in twenty-two years of clinical practice she had never come across a child suicide attempt before. She’s read about them but never come across one before. Of course the first thing out of my mind was to deny it.

  “ ‘No,” I said, fearing I was going to lose my temper, bang the table and barge out of the room. “It was an accident. JJ didn’t know what he was doing.”

  “ ‘That’s what I thought, but after talking to him I know better. Sit down, Mr O’Malley … please.”

  “I hadn’t realised I’d risen from the chair.

  “ ‘JJ has a rationale and, frankly, had I not heard it myself I would not have believed it.’ She waved a sheaf of papers at me. ‘JJ is an exceptional child, you know that. I have his SAT results here and I have never come across anything like them. At six years of age JJ has the reasoning capacity of someone two and half times his age. Right now there are students studying for their leaving who do not have half his brains.’

  “ ‘I know how gifted he is. That doesn’t mean he tried to kill himself.’

  “ ‘On its own, of course not, but above and beyond JJ’s logical capacity he has this ability to draw ideas together, to make connections between them and draw inferences and conclusions from them. That’s not unusual in itself, it’s the way children learn about themselves and their position in the world. But JJ’s ability goes way beyond that, he has the ability to see these things as part of his own life and existence. More than that he takes them to heart.’

  “ ‘This isn’t telling me anything,’ I blurted. ‘How does it explain him lying there with a bellyful of rhubarb leaves?’

  “ ‘Two things have come together in JJ’s mind over the last few weeks. Firstly, the fact of his being abandoned to the orphanage. That came as a shock to him and that is to be expected. Usually we advise that children be told this kind of thing when they are on the verge of puberty. They are better able to cope with it. With any luck the years of care and love they’ve had up to that point will stand to them. They should be secure enough in the parental environment to cope with it.’

  “ ‘JJ didn’t have that luxury.’

  “ ‘Yes, he told me and no one is to blame. However, the second thing: JJ has been studying hard for his first Holy Communion and he has become fixated on the doctrine of original sin. JJ has put these two ideas together, his abandonment to the orphanage and the doctrine of original sin, and he’s come up with a quite extraordinary narrative.’

  “ ‘Narrative?’

  “ ‘Story. His abandonment to the orphanage and the doctrine of original sin have come together in his mind and created the conviction that he is guilty of some unspeakable sin. He sees himself as without grace, graceless.’ She looked down at the desk and sifted through her papers. ‘Mr O’Malley, most people will go through their entire lives without ever reaching this kind of existential self-awareness. Most people can live quite happily without it. Those who cannot, some of them, have seen fit to write long impenetrable books on the subject. For anyone it is a considerable intellectual achievement but for a child it is well nigh beyond belief.’

  “ ‘And that was why he tried to kill himself, this guilt thing?’

  “ ‘No,’ she replied. ‘JJ wasn’t trying to kill himself—he was trying to save himself. I was trying to go to heaven, he said, those were his words. In his religious instruction he has learned that children live in a privileged innocence and if they die in this innocence they will go straight to heaven.’

  “ ‘I’m confused, the child is either guilty or innocent. He cannot be both at the same time.’

  “She nodded. ‘I had to look this up and I find that JJ’s reasoning is a bit garbled but it is not entirely incorrect. On one hand Catholic doctrine teaches the idea of original sin, this guilt from which no one is exempt. On the other it tells us that up to a certain age children exist in a state of innocence, essentially blameless and without moral responsibility. But come a certain age they are thought to possess reason and as a result know the difference between right and wrong—moral responsibility. That age is roughly thought to be around seven years old. It is not an arbitrary cut-off point. Children of that age show accelerated signs of rational and deductional powers. Their personalities become shaped, they become capable of reasoned decisions; in some jurisdictions they can testify in a court of law. For JJ this is hugely significant … Yesterday we had a small party for him. A nice little cake and seven candles. He blew them out and then burst into tears. When I asked him what was wrong he said it was now too late. It took me a while to make the connection—JJ was telling me it is now too late to commit suicide.’

  “I remember sitting there for a long time repeating that line to myself; it is now too late. That was the sort of thing that passed for good news in those days. After a long moment I asked her if she believed all of this. She spread her hands.

  “ ‘Mr O’Malley, I would believe anything this child told me. I have never met anyone like him. I don’t expect to meet anyone like him again.’

  “By then I badly wanted to get out of the room, my head was swimming and my throat was dry. I rose to go but she hadn’t finished.

  “ ‘One last thing. He said as well that he was sorry …”

  “ ‘That’s a start,’ I said, grateful. ‘That’s a good thing.’

  “She shook her head. ‘That’s a bad thing. What he meant was that he was sorry he was born.” ’‡

  Those were the type of memories I found painful going back over, memories I could well have done without myself. But of course they were exactly the type of thing JJ needed to know about himself. Sometimes though the mood between us was lighter. He’d come upon other stuff that was just plain daft, of no real importance in itself other than that it was the stuff of his life.

  He raised his face and pointed under his chin. “This scar. How many fights did I get into?”

  I guffawed, relieved to talk about something daft.

  “Nine stitches and a tetanus jab, it wasn’t a fight. Four years ago you came into my room at four o’clock in the morning,
covered in blood. You’d been in a car accident. Coming out of Skamps you’d taken a lift home with the Shevlin twins—they’d just bought their first car—a ten-year-old Toyota. Out over the bridge, foot to the floor and the music blaring—you were sitting in the back. Somewhere along the way a row broke out between the lads in front—was the Toyota a two litre or a one point eight. Whatever it was it hadn’t brakes enough to keep it on the road at the turn above the factory. Straight into the field it ploughed, turned over three or four times and it was the grace of God you were all able to walk away from it. Coming across the field in the dark you tripped and cut yourself on a length of barbed wire in the grass. You got a tetanus jab later that morning.”

  “The Shevlin twins, who’re they?”

  “Two of your buddies. You went to school with them. They’re in Boston now. Null and Void.”

  “Null and Void … who put that on them?”

  “You were the first I heard with it.”

  “Jesus.”

  “They’re good lads but not the sharpest knives in the drawer. But that’s the way you are, JJ. You see these things.”

  * His name scrolled out to infinity invokes a lonely image—the intrepid space child, thumb in mouth, adrift among the stars with nothing save his first catechism to guide him home to this imaginative standpoint. As an early attempt at self-definition the child’s claim to locate himself against the limitless reaches of the heavens prefigures the technological phenomena of image and information dispersal which characterises the Somnos project.

  † Considered as a mystical state, one of those privileged moments when God steps forward out of His primordial loneliness to take a bow, coma may be one of those vortices through which God is freed into the universe. Having written Himself into the world not as an idea but as an emergent property of neuronal activity in the superior parietal lobe, a signature accessed through suppression of all stimulus which orients and delimits us in time and space, it may be that these selfless God-bearers have lain themselves open to His immanence … through the vortices of these open minds God comes among us as pure potential, something prior to His Father, Son and Holy Ghost visitations, a phenomenon rarefied beyond the validating ecstasies of mystics, meditants and temporal-lobe epileptics.